This is my favourite chapter of the book. Here the bridge between the digital signage
and the broadcasting technologies is built. Adding an element of broadcasting makes
digital signage a fully featured new medium capable of providing any kind of non-real-time
as well as near-real-time and real-time content to an unlimited number of locations.
In other words, it has the potential of becoming the major consumer medium in the
future. My intention here has been to show the difference between unicasting —the
way of communicating over the Internet —and multicasting —the one point-to-multipoint
way of distributing IP packets. Various alternatives of unicasting, including peer-to-peer
solutions are discussed as well as different ways of implementing private multicasting
networks.

Much attention is paid to the use of satellites to broadcast IP data nationwide as
well as internationally. The satellite parts are a suitable introduction to this
field for people that want to start using satellite multicasting. This chapter is
really about linking the worlds of telecom and broadcasting together. It also shed
light on the often-asked question about when to use broadband and when to use satellite.

Chapter 7 includes 37 full-color illustrations.

When a file is dropped into the upload folder of the FTP server, the file is automatically
transferred to the destination “hot” folder of the selected receiving computers.